The Face of the Earth

by Deborah Raney

  She turned on the oven, then measured sugar and sifted flour, remembering how much she’d enjoyed baking when Audrey had been home to enjoy the fruits of her efforts. As she put the first batch of cookies in the oven, a deep longing for the warm friendship she’d shared with Jill rose inside her. In a way, she thought it was God’s gift to her––a dim shadow of the longing Mitch must be feeling for Jill. She needed that reminder.

  Maybe she’d grieved too soon. Maybe it was wrong to give up hope. If Mitch caught even a hint that she felt their search was in vain, he would not want her with him on these trips to Kansas City and back. And understandably so.

  But maybe he doesn’t really expect to find Jill alive. The thought took her breath away. She turned the mixer off and stared at the creamy batter in the mixing bowl that had been her grandmother’s. “Oh, dear Lord,” she whispered. “Please let us find Jill. And if that’s not possible, let us find . . . something. Something that will let Mitch go on with his life. Something that will let us both go on.”

  Her hand trembled on the mixer. She understood that God knew her every thought, but it was still hard to admit to Him how much she struggled with her feelings toward Mitch. How deeply her romantic interest in her friend's husband had been rekindled throughout these months they’d remembered––and mourned––Jill together, comforting and consoling each other. Grief had a tendency to produce intimacy, but she’d allowed that closeness to taint what had begun as innocent affection and concern.

  Ever so briefly, she toyed with the idea of backing out of the trip. But she’d already promised Mitch she’d go with him, and she could tell he was eager to have an extra set of eyes––and her insight regarding Jill. Besides, she’d already taken the time off from work. It was too late to back out now.

  Don’t make excuses, Austin. Just be honest. You want to go with him.

  “Make my attitudes right, God. Please.” By the time the sweet aroma of the first batch of cookies filled the house, she’d worked things out in her mind. She could manage this. Surely for a few days, she could set aside the longings of her heart and just be there for a friend in need.

  Wednesday, January 12

  A band of orange sunlight rimmed the eastern horizon as they headed north. Rounding a curve in the highway a few miles outside of Sylvia, Mitch flipped down the sun visor and looked over to the passenger seat, where Shelley sipped a cup of coffee. She’d brought a thermos full of the stuff and he was tempted to have her pour him a refill, but he’d wait until she was finished with hers.

  He’d intended to pay for her meals, but without talking to him about it, she’d packed a cooler that would have fed half of Clemons County. Not for the first time, a twinge of guilt bit at him. He should have discouraged her more strongly from taking time off work to help him. He knew from comments Jill had made over the years that Shelley was barely scraping by. He doubted she was salaried at the gift shop downtown, yet she was sacrificing three––maybe four—days’ pay to come with him. And now she was providing the food, too.

  “Tomorrow I’ll take care of lunch, but in the meantime . . .” He reached into the bag on the console between them and extracted another oatmeal cookie. He winked at Shelley. “You didn’t want any of these, did you?”

  She laughed. “It would be nice if you saved me one for lunch. The rest are all yours. Unless you want to share one with poor TP.”

  He glanced over the back of the seat where the dog was sacked out. “No, I’d hate to wake him up.”

  She rolled her eyes. “My, aren’t you the thoughtful one?”

  He acknowledged her sarcasm with a grin before stuffing the remainder of the cookie in his mouth. “Man, I haven’t had a homemade cookie in a while. These are great.”

  He’d meant it as a compliment, not to garner pity, but Shelley gave him a smile full of regret.

  He decided to tackle the subject head-on. Get it out of the way. “I got a little spoiled with our church bringing food those first few weeks, and all the goodies you made us. But I guess I’m going to need to learn how to cook for myself.”

  “You don’t cook? I mean . . . you haven’t cooked all this time?”

  “Not much. I know how to make popcorn.”

  “Microwave popcorn?”

  He nodded and managed to look sheepish.

  “That’s not cooking.”

  “Hey, I know my way to McDonald’s.” When the church’s onslaught of casseroles stopped, he’d begun hitting the drive-through after work, and grabbing something at the convenience store for breakfast on the way to school. The scales were beginning to groan in protest. Not to mention his bank account. “But don’t worry,” he told her. “I caught this cooking show the other night on cable. It doesn’t look too tough.”

  “What were they making?” She sounded skeptical.

  “Beef Wellington.”

  She seemed to think that was hysterically funny.

  “What?”

  “That’s like . . . the most challenging dish you could ever make.”

  “Um . . . I guess I didn’t watch the whole show.”

  More laughter. “You might want to start with scrambled eggs or PB and J or something a little more intermediate. But you cook on the grill, right?”

  “I haven’t for a while. But I will once the weather gets nice again. But somehow a steak or burger doesn’t quite cut it without all the trimmings.” He sobered. “I didn’t appreciate Jill’s cooking like I should have. Especially when she’d come home from a full day of teaching to make me a full meal deal.”

  “She knew you appreciated her.”

  He shook his head. It ate at him that they’d begun to speak of Jill in the past tense. “I’m not sure she did know. But if I ever get the chance, I’ll never take her for granted again.”

  “She knew, Mitch. You don’t need to beat yourself up about that.”

  He hoped she was right. And he meant what he’d said. If God gave him another chance, he would never fail to appreciate that everything good about him was because of the woman who’d completed him.

  He loved Jill. He truly did. So why did it feel like he was trying to convince himself? Why had it become so difficult recently to think about what it would be like if Jill really did come home?

  Chapter 20

  Thursday, January 13

  Shelley looked up from the bench in the corridor of the tidy suburban elementary school in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, a few miles outside of Kansas City. Mitch came down the hallway, and the hunch of his shoulders told her he hadn’t been any more successful here than at the other schools they’d visited this morning. Yesterday had been a total bust, too.

  “Any luck?” he asked. They’d split up at this school since there were two teachers here who’d been at Jill’s conference. Shelley had finished early and waited in the hall for him. Hoping to cover more ground, Mitch had put schools with more than one teacher attending the conference at the top of the list. But it was a short list. By Friday they’d be talking to one teacher at a time, hoping beyond hope that the person had struck up a conversation with Jill at the conference, remembered their conversation after more than five months, and that the substance of their talk would yield some sort of clue.

  Shelley wouldn’t voice her thoughts, but it seemed like an exercise in futility if ever there was one.

  She rose to meet him. “Sorry. Nothing. You?”

  He shook his head, but didn’t expound.

  “Let’s go find a place to eat our picnic. Take a little break.”

  “No.” He motioned toward the front door. “We need to keep moving. We can eat in the car.”

  She managed a smile. “All right.”

  He grimaced and dipped his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so short.”

  “No apology necessary. I know it wasn’t aimed at me.” Still, it stung. And maybe it was aimed at her.

  But he put a hand to the small of her back as they went out through the front doors and his tone softened. “Do you
mind too much if we eat on the road? I’ll do the driving.”

  “No. I understand. I just thought you could use a break.”

  “I’ve only got a few days to do this, Shelley.” He seemed to be weighing his words carefully. “I’d rather keep pushing and accomplish as much as possible while we’ve both got the time off.”

  “Mitch––” She bit her lower lip, struggling with how much to say.

  Turning away and striding ahead of her across the parking lot, he aimed his keys at his Saturn and the lights flashed. When they reached the car, he opened the door, but didn’t get in, and instead stood staring at her over the top of the vehicle, waiting with an expression she couldn’t read.

  “I’m afraid you’re going to kill yourself at this rate,” she risked.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re pushing yourself to the edge. I’m afraid it’s going to make you sick––getting so worked up over this.”

  His jaw tensed. “And you think a little picnic is going to fix that?”

  She shook her head and climbed in the car, wishing Mitch would pick one mood and stick with it. After a few seconds, he eased behind the wheel.

  “I’m sorry.” She stared out the windshield. “I never should have said anything.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “No . . . You know what?” Anger boiled up in her and she angled her body in the seat to face him. “Maybe I should have said something a long time ago. Not that you’d have listened to me any more then than you are now.”

  He stared back at her.

  “Mitch, it has been months and the authorities have done––”

  “Barely five months and I feel like my hands have been tied most of that time!” He pulled out of the parking lot, consulted the GPS on his phone, and headed south out of town.

  “The authorities have done everything possible to find Jill. What you’re doing now––” She swept her hand across the vista of the road they were traveling. “Will it be enough? When you’ve driven every road in the state, will you be ready to admit it’s over then?” She found the tenderness she’d wanted to have toward him. “Mitch . . . How long can you wait before you join the living again? Until it kills you? Until you’ve cheated your kids out of their dad? Until you’ve let your friends drop away? I can’t––”

  “Do you honestly think I can just sit back and do nothing? Just accept that she’s gone? What if it was you out there? Do you think Jill would just shrug and say, ‘Oh, well, guess we’ll never find her’? You know she wouldn’t. You know she’d be doing exactly what I’m doing right now. And she wouldn’t stop until we found you.”

  Sobered, she stared back at him. There was really nothing she could say. He was right. Jill would never have rested until they had answers.

  How had they wound up in this same argument again? The very one that had driven them apart for weeks before? Why couldn’t she let him search to the ends of the earth if that’s what he wanted to do? She looked away, her thoughts churning.

  She cared about him. She saw what this grief––this not knowing––was doing to him. Choosing her words carefully, she tried to explain. “Doesn’t there come a point where you put this in God’s hands? Where you just have to trust that He knows what He’s doing?”

  “Maybe.” He sounded so wounded. So defeated. “Maybe that time will come. But it hasn’t yet. And I couldn’t live with myself if I stopped searching one day too soon.”

  “I understand. And that has to be between you and the Lord. I should have kept my mouth shut.”

  “You said . . . I’ve cheated my kids.” He swallowed hard. “Do you think I’ve done that? Have the kids said something to you?”

  “No. Oh, of course not, Mitch. You misunderstood.” She reached across the console and put a hand over his. “I know you’ve been there for your kids through every day of this. It’s just—It scares me, what I see happening to you. Seeing you so . . . tortured. It’s become an obsession––”

  He tensed, and she moved her hand away from his, too aware of the feel of his skin against hers.

  She rushed to explain. “I know, because it’s her, it can’t really be anything else for you. But at some point––Mitch, you might have to accept that she’s gone, and that you may never find out what happened. You might have to let her go.”

  “I can’t. I can’t let her go.”

  “Then this limbo you’re living in . . . this grief will kill you.”

  He sagged in his seat. “Sometimes I think it already has.”

  The resignation in his voice weighed on her. “Then you need to get help. Hire a private investigator to do all this running around”––she motioned to the highway before them––“to do all these interviews.”

  “I thought that’s what you were here for . . .” He smiled, trying, she knew, to lighten the moment. But just as quickly, he turned serious. “No one else could recognize if something Jill said to a teacher had significance or not. I’m the only one who could figure that out––or you. That’s why I was so relieved when you offered to come with me. It was an answer to a prayer I hadn’t even thought to pray.”

  “And I’m happy to be here with you––for you. But what worries me is after. If we come back to Sylvia Sunday night and we haven’t turned up anything . . . If we come home without Jill, without even a clue about Jill, then what? What will you do then?”

  The sigh he expelled wrenched her heart. But how could he really think they would find something that numerous police forces and detectives and law enforcement agencies had missed?

  “I don’t know, Shelley.” He turned away from her and pulled the rumpled list of names from the visor overhead. “I can’t think that far ahead. Right now I have to concentrate on what I can do.”

  “Okay. I can understand that. I can accept that. I’ll help you in any way I can. But Sunday night, if we haven’t––”

  Mitch reached to put a hand on her arm. “I need you to think positively for me. I need you to believe she’s out there. And that we will find her.”

  She opened her mouth to lie to him, to say that she would think positively. But even if she’d uttered all the right words, he would have read the truth in her eyes in a heartbeat.

  Chapter 21

  Friday, January 14

  “Why don’t we stay together to talk to this teacher? The other school is just down the road.” Mitch felt bad for jumping down Shelley’s throat yesterday, and had been trying to make it up to her on the road today.

  She lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug. “Whatever you want to do.”

  Shelley wasn’t the type to hold a grudge, but she wasn’t exactly warming up to him either. He didn’t blame her. He’d been a jerk. She was only worried about him––that he was working himself into exhaustion. And she was probably right. Jill would have done exactly the same thing in Shelley’s shoes, and he would have loved her for it.

  Shelley consulted her iPhone and directed him through the small town of Sedalia, to the elementary school. They were back on the Missouri side and had taken Highway 50, stopping to talk to a teacher in Warrensburg.

  They were slowly working their way back toward Sylvia, but were still a good three hours from home. It was taking longer than Mitch had figured. He’d sat in the principal’s office for twenty minutes at the previous school, waiting for a teacher to finish a class. At this rate, they’d still be interviewing the people on his list next spring.

  He felt pressure on his arm and looked down to see Shelley holding out the bag of oatmeal cookies. “Last one. You want it?”

  “Thanks, but I’m good. It’s yours.”

  “How about we split it?” She broke the cookie in half before he could protest.

  “Thanks.” He took a bite, happy for what he hoped was a peace offering. “South Warren should be coming right up. Turn left there.”

  The school was in a residential area and he parked in the shade across the street. “It would be nice to have you wit
h me,” he risked. “TP will be fine in the car. But you’re welcome to wait here, too, if you’d rather.”

  Shelley unbuckled her seatbelt. “No, I’ll come with you.”

  He cracked the windows for TP and they crossed the parking lot side by side. They checked in at the front office, and strolled down a corridor that still bore a few tattered Christmas decorations. At each of the schools they’d visited, he’d been interested to see another principal’s turf, and to look at the notices on bulletin boards and displays in the cases along the walls. Looking down the hallways, he could almost imagine Jill stepping through one of the classroom doorways, herding a passel of third-graders out to the playground for recess.

  He wondered if Shelley’s imagination had played the same games with her. He started to ask her, but she pointed to a sign on a door to their right.

  “Right there. Grade four, right? Mrs. Marnivot?”

  Nodding, and trying not to get his hopes up, Mitch took in a breath and let Shelley enter the room first. He rapped softly on the doorjamb before stepping in behind her.

  The gray-haired woman at the whiteboard looked over her shoulder, then put down the eraser she’d been using and approached them. She wore an expression of curiosity they’d become familiar with. “May I help you?”

  Mitch introduced himself, and Shelley and explained why they were here. If it hadn’t been so very real, it was starting to be almost comical to see the universal response to his story. One hand went to Mrs. Marvinot’s crepey throat and she gave a little gasp. “Oh, my! Yes, we heard about your wife.”

  “I wondered if I could ask you a few questions. About the professional development conference you attended in Kansas City this past September.”